


how the sky looked after they left

by pyrophane



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Post-Spring High, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 14:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7176464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Misaki Hana, and regrets.</p><blockquote>
  <p><em>That's not the kind of person you are, either,</em> Hana wanted to say, but he had left, in the end, and she hadn't.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	how the sky looked after they left

**Author's Note:**

> post-spring high codetta for my favourite manager written for the 'our summer' zine, which you can download [here!](https://twitter.com/oz_hqfanbook/status/741921163249487873) part of a collab with the amazing [mandy](http://merjolras.tumblr.com/); you can find her pitch-perfect art [here!](http://merjolras.tumblr.com/post/145797939131/my-contribution-to-the-aussie-hq-fanbook-in)
> 
> all my love to rin and ivy for the beta work. title from 'achingly beautiful how the sky blooms umber at the end of the day, through the canopy' by gabrielle calvocoressi.

 

 

 

Two days after Spring High, Hana stood in front of Ishinomaki Station’s cheerful mint-and-white façade instead of the gym where afternoon practice had started six minutes ago, watching the sluggish crawl of people filtering through the entrance. Even in the shade of the station canopy it was unseasonably warm—the kind of still, soupy heat more suited to a midsummer afternoon than late spring. She readjusted the folders she was carrying and tried very hard to think about Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Her parents had been dropping increasingly desperate hints about cram school for months, and now that she had no other after-school commitments they'd enrolled her in an institute close to the city. Entrance examinations were just around the corner, and she needed the remedial work, considering her recent science rankings. Unfortunately it was too far away to walk, so here she was, sweat slicking down her back, the direct warmth of sunlight on the nape of her neck rather than the secondhand heat of the court, the wrong weight in her arms. It was too bright. She ducked her head and blinked away the sudden glare.

“Misaki? Hey!”

Raising her head, Hana squinted at the hazy person-shaped figure approaching her until it coalesced into Okudake’s familiar build. “Oh! Hi, Okudake-kun! So hot today, isn’t it? I feel like I’m going to melt.”

Okudake lifted his hand in greeting. A square of amber light bisected his forearm and fell away. “Yeah, summer’s definitely on its way, I think,” he said. He gestured at the wide glass windows of the station. “I didn’t know you caught the train.”

“Ah, I don’t usually, but,” Hana jerked her chin at her armful of books, “I just started cram school. Late, I guess, but I didn’t have the time, not until…”

“Until we lost,” said Okudake.

“Yeah,” said Hana, unable to keep her mouth from twisting. “Even with the new and _improved_ play style that got us prefectural rankings, we still couldn’t get past the third round.”

It wasn’t as though it was a surprise. Their newfound strength was predicated on inconsistency. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. More often it didn’t. When you treated a loss with the same offhand insouciance as a victory, both became meaningless. That was why Johzenji would never progress past _prefectural rankings_.

In miniature it was bearable—Bobata’s gravel-road laugh, Futamata’s hands arching back for a set, the water bottles lined up near the locker room door. Hana was a manager; details were her area of responsibility. But so too was the panoramic view from the side of the court, and she couldn’t afford— _they_ couldn’t afford to just let it lie.

It hadn’t mattered, in the end: Hana had never been able to find her voice when it came to saying it.

“It wouldn’t have been any better with me still on the team.” Okudake's gaze flickered towards his hands. “We would’ve just held the team back.”

“You don’t know that for certain. They would’ve listened to you.” The tread of the conversation felt familiar because it was; they’d played this out countless times since Okudake had shown up at the storeroom where she was doing inventory five days after Interhigh and told her he was quitting the team. It was rote and yet it was not, any longer. Something had been declawed. “Maybe I should’ve just… left, too.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Okudake said, soft. “That’s not the kind of person you are.”

 _That’s not the kind of person you are, either,_ Hana wanted to say, but he had left, in the end, and she hadn’t.

When she’d joined the team as a first-year, she’d gone down to Tokyu Hands after school and bought the bulkiest notebook she could find, partially for the way its heft seemed to imbue the position with a solemn sort of gravity, partially so she’d be able to accumulate progressive data on the team over the next three years, all in the same place. Planning ahead, after all, was a valuable skill for a manager to have, and therefore a vital one to cultivate.

All that year she’d filled up water bottles, iced bruises, drawn up club promotions, cheered on practice matches, and in between the endless litany of managerial duties she’d read up as much as she could on volleyball theory, writing out lists of plays at the back of her notebook. Not that she expected the team to ask for her input—certainly not so early in her tenure—but it couldn’t hurt to be well-prepared, and by the time they did she would be able to rattle off something insightful. Effortlessly impressive! The kind of support offered by any manager worth her while.

Strengths and weaknesses. Potentials and possibilities. Those were the terms in which a manager thought. It was not yet second nature to her but it would be, soon, and armed with that understanding she was content to begin her notes and wait it out. There were about seven steps from the court to the bleachers where she sat with her notebook, and that distance hadn’t seemed insurmountable, then. At any moment she could stand up, close the gap. Step from the shade into the sun, the transition seamless.

She’d waited three years for the right moment. Even when Runa had joined the team, she’d stayed on, unable to leave before she could prove that much to herself. It was true: she wasn’t that kind of person. She could never have left with her heart still balanced on the toss of the ball.

“When the ball hit our side of the court for the last time,” said Hana, “I was—relieved, you know. To be done with it. We were never going to—I mean, the work of a manager never really ends—” she exhaled, shaking her head, “—but—well! I said what I wanted to say to them. That’s what I promised when I stayed. Wouldn’t want all that data to go to waste, I mean.” She frowned down at her physics notes, visible through the translucent plastic of the topmost folder. Energy transformations, she’d written, before stopping. She couldn’t remember what she’d wanted to write next. “I don’t know how much they… anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m not the manager anymore.”

“They did listen to you, though, in the end.” When Hana glanced up, sharply, Okudake was smiling. “That’s what I heard from Terushima—he wouldn’t stop enthusing about how incredible _Hana-san_ was in the last—well, anyway, I told you, you’re our manager. We’re always going to listen to you.”

“It was too late, anyway. I—I didn’t change anything.”

“But you could,” said Okudake. “You’ve always been able to,” and Hana thought of her first-year self and her empty notebook, brimming with possibility, steadfast in the knowledge that someday the court would be hers as surely as it was her team’s. “Now you know for certain.”

It was still spring but it already felt like summer, the languid heat almost malleable in her hands, the way the team—her team—had been, and if only she’d known it earlier—who knew? The season had ended, but next summer—that was anyone’s game. She’d spent three years fascinated by that devotion without ever allowing herself to be part of it, and now it surged over her, telescoped, overwhelming in its sheer magnitude. Wrong-footed by how naturally everyone else claimed their share of it, she’d let the distance between the court and the bleachers go to stone, while all along the power to choose what it was she wanted to be a part of had been in her hands. Potentials, possibilities.

Misaki Hana, manager of Johzenji Volleyball Club. Not such a bad way to be remembered, after all.

“You’re right,” said Hana. All three years’ worth of delayed gratitude knocking the breath from her lungs. “I guess I do.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! 
> 
> [tumblr](http://delineative.tumblr.com) | [twitter](http://twitter.com/ennezahard)


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